The boys asked for me to make some cupcakes today , with its famous yummy smooth icing , french butter cream icing . And i ended up making a huge mess , playing with fondant . The icing was very quick to make , which wasn’t a big deal at all . But we’re just having fun making the pumpkins , the tombstones and the ghost . It took time , but wasn’t bad at all ..

Originally was just going to make regular cupcakes for my family , no fancy stuff , just regular cupcakes and slathered some icing on top . Well , it never went that way , although i was so distracted earlier while i was making the french butter cream icing , i turned the sugar into caramel .. LOL , yes i had to redo it , wasted 2 eggs and sugar !! So my chocolate cupcakes , ended up with beautiful orange icing from yellow and red gel coloring that i used , and why did i choose orange ? Because my son loves the color of orange , and…

This is one delicious nutty ice cream . The color of the ice cream might not be so inviting , but believe me , looks can be deceiving sometimes . I really think this has become my favourite ice cream , on the top list .. more than the vanilla ice cream !! It’s not hard to make , just make sure you watch it closely when you roast the sesame seed because it might get burnt easily since it’s black and you wouldn’t be able to tell . So anyway , here it is You need : 1/2 cup of roasted black sesame seed 3/4 cup of sugar 4…

I have been looking for a better recipe of carrot cake . I used to have this recipe , that needs 3 sticks of butter to make a 2 layers of carrot cake . No i don’t have any complains about it , but the 3 sticks of butter plus another stick for the cream cheese icing ,doesn’t make me feel better about it . Luckily i found this one recipe that does not even require any butter !!  And it tasted so good , i don’t even bother to make it into a round cake , but i made it into cupcakes and loaf cake . And since i…

Southern speciality cake , red velvet cake is a deliciously moist cake with cream cheese icing as the frosting . I love the cake , but i don’t care too much for any kind of icing , esp. cream cheese icing . Even when i make carrot cake i scraped off the icing off my cake , i still make the cakes the right way of course , with the cream cheese icing , except when i have my own slice , i scrape it off 🙂 Anyway , this red velvet cake is quite easy to make , as any other layer cake , the consuming time is the…

I bought this gelato and sorbetto book by Ciao Bella , i never even heard of the name before . But , i looked through the book , they have some great recipes , i decided to try one . Made the mixture the night before .. just like when i made other Gelato before , Zabaglione Gelato . So , this recipe is quite similar to that one , 2 cups of milk 1 cup of heavy cream 2/3 cup of sugar 4 egg yolks In a pot , heat the milk and heavy cream , while it’s heating , beat the egg yolks and sugar until it’s pale…

Never in my life had i so much trouble making cookies !! Seriously .. these little suckers are pretty , but they’re among the hardest cookies i ever had to make !! I remember the first time i made them was about a year ago , and that too took several attempts to get it right . I never had them ,  i never made them , they’re not so popular among the Midwest i guess .. unless you live in the city .. i know for sure the bakeries around the suburb don’t sell these kind of cookies LOL So since yesterday i’ve been struggling with these cookies .…

Never had a peach cobbler before , and lately i’ve been buying lots of peaches . I grilled them and it was delicious , last night i asked my husband if we should grill the peaches or try to make peach cobbler . He never had one either .. so he said why not trying something new . I did .. it was super easy and turned out to be delicious .. rich dessert .. and i happened to have french vanilla ice cream on hand . I made the ice cream the day before .. so it was perfect !!! Unfortunately the picture doesn’t do any justice .. and…

Yummy grilled peaches , so easy and delicious . I think it tastes really great even without the cream , but then again i am not a cream cheese person . 2 ripe peaches 2 tsp. canola oil 1 tbsp. of honey 4 oz cream cheese 1 tsp. lavender / rosemary 1 tsp. lemon juice Toss the peaches with honey and oil , heat up the grill to medium hot , and grill the peaches . Mix the cream ingredients and refrigerate for an hour . Once done grilling , refrigerate the peaches for an hour  , and add the cream . Decorate with fresh mints .

When i used to live in Indonesia , we had this street vendor selling bakpao , or , steamed buns , that has so many different fillings , such as pork , chicken , or red beans or yellow beans . My favourite was always the yellow beans . Few days ago i learned to make the fillings for chinese pastry , or kue pia . And it reminds me of home .. and so , i thought last night .. why not trying it for the steamed buns . Although this is using lima beans .. it still tastes delicious , i am sure we can always use the…

I’ve used this recipe few times , and i think it’s one of the best cheesecake recipe out there . I never failed making this , even the very first time making it few years ago . So , couple of nights ago , i was looking for something to do , it was a busy day but , for some reason i just wanted to keep going and going .. yes , it’s like that energizer bunny .. LOL . Originally i was going to make Chocolate Babka .. but then my son said , why not cheesecake . I thought .. sure , why not cheesecake ?? Got…

I have 3 overripe bananas , nobody likes eating overripe bananas . I hate to throw them away , i ended up making banana bread . Banana bread is one of those things that is super easy to make , basically you have all ingredients on hand . I usually make the banana bread the healthy way , no sour cream , nor buttermilk , no butter , just vegetable oil and other normal ingredients for banana bread . But this time , i used butter , and well .. there is one good thing in the ingredients , the greek yogurt . Result was amazingly light banana bread and…

Ever since the farmer market opened this year , last april , i’ve been buying plantains a lot ! This time , i tried grilling it , since the weather is warming up , and instead of baking it like i did the past few times , i decided to have it grilled . Everybody said that frying it is good but trying to avoid more fatty stuff , we thought grilling is the best . Not only it’s healthier but it’s also brings out the best taste in it . Although this recipe below is not quite the healthiest choice , but if i had to eat it plain…

Opera cake is a french cake , and i should have left the french cake baking to the french . I just slaughtered the cake .. LOL , anyway , it took about 3.5 hours to make this cake , to think that it’s only 10 minutes of baking .. it’s kinda ridiculous , isn’t it ? Although , you can always make them days ahead , there are few steps that can be made ahead . The coffee syrup , and the coffee buttercream can always be made a day ahead . That would save your time tremendously . I would leave the ganache and the sponge cake on…

I was wondering when i found this recipe in my Bon Appetit book , i bought this book few months ago , it has tons of recipes , from cakes , cookies , ice cream to pies . I’ve tried some of their recipes and they’re delicious . One day i ran across this recipe when i was browsing through it , and i thought what the heck is hot milk cake ?? Why do they called hot milk cake ? Well for a good reason , it literally uses hot milk , and the hot milk is poured into the batter . Now come to think of it ,…

Tonight we tried a new recipe from Ben and Jerry ice cream book that i bought the other day . Instead of choosing ice cream , i decided let’s just try making sorbet , we bought lots of strawberries earlier anyway from the grocery store , why not putting them to a good use . The recipe only calls for half a pound , not much at all , but it makes about 1 quart of sorbet . Sorbet is made from fresh fruits , sugar and water , no milk and no heavy cream involved . But i guess if it’s Americanize sorbet , it would be involving milk…

Over the weekend i ordered ice cream maker, it’s Cuisinart newest model , forgot exactly what was the series number . But i remember over the christmas , William Sonoma had a christmas sale for that ice cream maker , the price was pretty good , almost like 50% off or something . But i didn’t get it on time , i didn’t get to read the email on time , so it was too late to order it . So , last week i decided to look this up , and i ended up buying myself an ice cream maker . The package arrived yesterday and i washed the…